Bad News for Roger Stone

Roger Stone has received support from high places this week, including word that the Justice Department would seek a lighter sentence in his case, but one announcement did not break his way. A judge has rejected Stone's request for a new trial, CNN reports. The decision was reached last week, before news broke of the new sentence recommendation, and unsealed Wednesday. The defendant said in his request that a juror who worked for the IRS was biased against him. "The fact that the juror was just one of these approximately 1,400 lawyers (at the IRS) does not begin to establish the sort of inherent bias that should have prompted the Court to strike (the juror) in its discretion," Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote last week.

Stone's lawyers didn't show there'd been "a serious miscarriage of justice," Jackson wrote, per the Hill. Stone was convicted of five counts of lying to Congress, one of witness tampering and one of obstructing a congressional committee proceeding. Jackson is scheduled to sentence him on Feb. 20. (More Roger Stone stories.)